


A Microscopic Dog In His Catastrophic Plan

by gloriouswhisperstyphoon



Series: a thousand threads of a life never lived [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Constantine Fusion, Exorcist and Demons, F/M, Rampant Abuse of Latin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-07 07:05:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriouswhisperstyphoon/pseuds/gloriouswhisperstyphoon
Summary: Jyn Erso, exorcist, demonologist and petty dabbler in the dark arts. Liberating for those who want to take a leap of faith and a good person to know, but not someone you want to be friends with.But the darkness is rising and a psychic is having strange visions of her as the bodies pile up around them.Or: Rogue One, in the world where demons are not necessarily men and nothing is quite as it seems.





	1. Take A Little Walk To The Edge Of Town

Jyn Erso shoved her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat and kept her head down as she walked through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. She just needed to get to the murder scene and collect her easy payout. 

A metallic tang caught like bile at the back of her mouth, and her hackles rose as she kept walking, 

_ Something’s deeply wrong here. _

A long black shadow passed overhead with the sound of ruffling wings and Jyn flicked her eyes upwards, looking for the source of the noise. 

_ Shit. Not one of that lot again. _

She walked down into an alleyway, her hand clenching into a fist at her side. She wheeled around, eyebrow raised and staring down the shadows as they seemed to coalesce into a single mass.

The sound of wings unfurling echoed in the alley and an older black man stood there, obscured in the shadows. 

“Saw,” she said, her lips pursed tight. “I didn’t expect to see any of you lot here.”

He stepped out of the shadows and the harsh light of day seemed to cast him in dark and monochromatic greys. “You shouldn’t be here, Jyn.”

She glared at him, trying to work out whether he was friend or foe in this instance. “I could say the same of you.” 

Jyn watched his eyes fix on her, a strange light in his expression. “Why are you here, Saw?”

“I was sent to watch over you.” He came closer, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder and Jyn could feel the comfort from it, before she mustered her will and shoved it off, the weight of the world returning to her shoulders. 

“Yeah, you lot would like that, wouldn’t you? Bloody leeches, trying to feed off my pain,” Jyn ground out, before glaring skyward, a single middle finger extended to the Big Guy in the Sky. “You hear that, you bastards? I’m fine! Now get lost.”

Saw shook his head sadly. “You’re not fine, Jyn. You damned a girl to Hell.”

A cold line of fear rose at the back of her neck.

_ Jyn! Please! It hurts so much! _

“Don’t you dare say anything about Astra.”

The angel shrugged. “I can’t change your fate, Jyn, but I can ease it for you.” The shadows seemed to lengthen around him, before he glanced up, a look of irritation on his face. “We’re running out of time, Jyn. You’ve been out of play for too long. There’s something on the way.”

Her cold sweat seemed to be getting worse, and gooseflesh rose on her arms. “What’s on the way?” she demanded. 

The sound of sirens rose in the distance and Saw looked at her, almost as though he were picking her apart, sin by sin. “I need to go, Jyn. You’ll find out what’s happening soon, though.”

The shadows darkened in the alleyway again and they moved around Saw before they faded back and the light returned, with Saw nowhere to be seen.

“Wait!” she shouted into thin air. “What’s coming?”

_ Goddamn angels. Never giving her a clear answer. _

The sirens started to grow louder and Jyn headed out of the alleyway as fast as she could, barely looking to see where she was going.

Screw the case, she needed to get out of here as soon as possible. 

Her hands clenched in her pockets and she could feel the bite of her nails in the skin of her palms. 

What could he mean by “something on the way”, though?

Jyn chewed on her lip, lost in her own thoughts, when she collided into something solid, falling backwards and knocking her out of her reverie. 

The man that she’d walked into was staring at her from where he was sprawled on the pavement, his eyes seeming to bore deep into her.

Jyn raised her chin to glare at him. “Watch where you’re going next time!”

He shook his head slightly, before shoving himself upright and rubbing a hand across his face. “You can’t be real. I know you,” he said, his voice a million miles away. He seemed confused by what was going on, expressions moving across his face and his eyes darting around. 

She shook her head before pasting a grin onto her face. “Doubt it, mate. Just got one of those faces, don’t I?”

_ Something’s coming, Jyn. _

The man kept staring at her, finally managing to tear his eyes away as he hurried off into the crowds as if he had all the demons of Hell chasing after him.

Jyn stood there in complete shell-shocked silence for a moment, before looking down and seeing a black book on the ground. She bent down to pick it up, the crowds of the city moving around her.

She opened it up to a random page, only to see her own face staring back at her from the page. A perfect black charcoal drawing of one Jyn Erso, but not a scene she had ever experienced or imagined herself. He’d drawn her standing in an alleyway, her eyes fierce and a flame held out in her hand. 

_ The Hellblazer,  _ he’d written on the page. 

What the hell was going on?

She flipped through the rest of the pages, all filled with different drawings of herself - none of them were a standard stalker’s sort of voyeuristic photographs. No, these were something  _ more. _

There was an urgency to how they’d all been drawn, as if he’d been suddenly possessed by the urge to put pencil to paper without regard for anything else. 

Her fingers moved of their own accord to look at the front page, for any sign of who the mysterious man was. 

_ For Cassian. _

_ Stop drawing pictures of a woman you’ve never met before on the back of my paperwork. _

_ Kay. _

Cassian.

The man was called Cassian.

And he had drawn her - some of them were things that had never happened to her. Others… Some of the others were from the worst moments of her life.

_ Newcastle. _

He knew about Newcastle.

How did he know about Newcastle?

What the hell was even happening?

Jyn turned to the direction he had vanished off into, shaking her head to clear the thousand roiling thoughts in her mind.

  
  
  
  


\--

  
  


 

The crime scene was abuzz by the time she arrived, the clouds starting to spit drizzle lightly overhead.

The metallic tang on the back of her tongue that had been present ever since her arrival in New York had only seemed to get sharper the closer she’d gotten to this building and she tried not to retch as she walked in.

The building was filthy on the inside, graffiti scrawled all over the walls and garbage carpeting the floor in the stairwell. 

Jyn picked her way past, still clutching the sketchbook from earlier, and started making her way up the stairs, the  _ wrongness _ of the place just getting worse. A policeman barred her way, his face stern and his hand on the gun at his hip. 

Jyn just leaned against the wall and raised an eyebrow. “Heard you boys needed an expert in the occult.”

He looked deeply skeptical. “You? What can you help us with?”

She shrugged, and shoved her way past. “Stopping the bodies from piling up.”

The inside of the apartment smelled like the copper decay of blood and Jyn raised an arm over her nose as she walked in through the door. 

The first thing she saw was the body on the floor, surprisingly bloodless and being prepared for loading into a body bag on a gurney. She was drawn to the body, moving towards it in attempt to find out what had happened. 

Someone was shouting at her, but it sounded distant, beyond her blind focus on the body, and she shoved them off, before they yanked at her and -

Jyn’s eyes widened as she saw the man from earlier standing in front of her in the middle of the crime scene she’d been asked to consult on, his face marred by confusion.

“What the hell is this even?” he muttered, half to himself.

Her mouth opened and she spoke without even thinking first, holding out his sketchbook. “If I were a betting woman, I would almost say that something was trying to push us together.”

He stared at her, before extending his right hand and taking his sketchbook with the other. “Cassian Andor. Detective. I was the one that asked for a consultant.”

Jyn reached out and took his hand in a firm shake. “Jyn Erso. Expert in -”

“Demonology, exorcism and master of the dark arts. I’m Detective Kay Tuesso. And you’ve already met Cassian,” said a voice from the doorway, breaking the spell between them.

Her head whipped around to see a tall blonde man walking towards them and she scowled. “I need to change that. Just a petty dabbler - don’t want to put on airs.”

The other man ignored her and walked over to Cassian. “She looks like the woman you keep drawing in that book.”

Cassian looked pensive, tearing his eyes away from Jyn as she looked around the tiny apartment. She barely heard him mutter, “I think she is the woman from those drawings.”

The smell of sulfur and hellfire got worse and Jyn raised her arm over her face, trying to block it out. There had to be more to this place than just a smell for her to be brought in. “Why did you guys call me in?”

Cassian tapped her shoulder, turning her towards the kitchen wall. “Because of that,” he said, pointing to a completed demonic gate painted on the wall in blood. 

_ Oh God. Saw was right.  _

Her eyes widened and she could feel the blood rushing from her face as she took in the whole scene, while the two detectives moved around behind her and the world went on outside. Everything felt strange, as if she were moving through a fog, and a chill crept down her spine. 

“Can you tell us what that symbol means, Ms Erso?” Kay asked. 

Jyn shook her head, trying to clear the confusion from her mind. Back to the present. She had to stop him.

She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that she’d seen it all wrong. It was all happening them again, Jyn came face to face with the exact same symbol.

_ Nergal. _

_ Astra’s screams echoed in her mind. Jyn! Help! It hurts so much! _

_ Just stay calm, Astra! I’m going to save you, just hold on! _

A voice interrupted her, and she looked around to see the people in the room looking at her with alarm. 

“Do you know what that symbol is?” Cassian asked, looking at her with an expression of concern. 

Jyn licked her lips, her mouth feeling as though someone had filled it with ashes. “It’s a demon gate. Someone’s just let a demon loose on New York City.”

The two detectives wore matching expressions of skepticism. A petrified shriek rose from outside and Jyn sprinted down the stairs to see what was happening, only to find a scene of complete chaos.

The gurney from earlier was lying abandoned in the middle of the street, the doors of the ME’s van hanging open.

The black body bag was on the ground, rolling around. 

It was writhing in a disjointed, jerky fashion before -

Abruptly, the body bag stilled, the whole scene eerily silent.

The ME started to cautiously move towards it. 

Jyn could hear the click of a gun safety from behind her where Kay and Cassian were standing. 

And then everything exploded into life., The bag tore itself apart, the dead woman bursting out of it to grab the hapless ME. 

A scream echoed out across the street as the ME’s head was crushed by a being of unbelievable strength and power. 

Jyn cursed under her breath and ran closer to the reanimated dead woman.

Its eyes were white and glazed with demonic possession, its head hanging off its broken neck at an unnatural angle. Shuffling closer to her, the corpse whispered something under its permanently bated breath that might have been Aramaic. 

Jyn stretched a hand out. 

She licked her lips, finding her voice. “Tell me your name.”

The dead woman’s chest exploded with a bullet in it. 

“Don’t shoot!” she yelled, not taking her eyes off the dead woman.

Cassian started shouting from next to her. “Stand down!”

Jyn kept going. She needed answers. “I’m addressing the demon squatting in that corpse! It’s not free real estate in there! What is your name?”

The body went silent for a moment, the whispers ceasing.

“That’s it. Tell me your name.”

A tear of blood appeared at the corner of the dead woman’s eye. 

“Demon! What is your name?”

A voice with all the power of the abyss echoed out. “Baphomet!”

Jyn moved closer, one hand outstretched and the other fumbling in her pocket for her lighter. She licked her lips again, the almost-forgotten words coming to her lips. “Exorcisamus te, Baphomet, omnis immunde spiritus, omnis satanis potestas, omnii infernalis adversarii!”

The dead woman let out a shout, its voice deep and booming. “You have no power against me, mortal!”

The metallic tang from earlier permeated every pore of Jyn’s being and she tried not to gag. 

“You! Farseer! What do you know of this world?” the corpse boomed at someone just over Jyn’s shoulder. 

A chill went through the air and the dead woman started to levitate. 

Jyn grabbed its waist to hold it down, as electricity crackled in the air. She kept going, ignoring everything around her. 

The possessed corpse started to pitch about awkwardly before Jyn threw it to the ground, slamming a knee into its chest to hold it in place. “Ab insídiis diáboli! Líbera nos, Dómine!”

The tires of the van exploded and the metal started to dent of its own accord as a series of letters were gouged into the asphalt of the street by a set of invisible claws. 

Windows exploded outward and Jyn felt someone throw themselves at her as the dead woman finally went still. 

Cassian met her eyes, his chest rising and falling as he sucked in breaths before looking at the scene around them. “What does all of this mean?”

Jyn looked down at the words on the street. 

_ CASSIAN DIE _

She felt her hand clutch her lucky lighter. “That I wasn’t wasting my time here. Something powerful’s after you.”

“What do you even mean, Jyn?” He ran a hand over his face, the lines there looking as if someone had put them there with a sledgehammer. “This has happened so goddamn fast. First I find you, then someone commits a murder and releases a demon, then  _ this _ ?”

Jyn grabbed his wrist, forcing herself to stay calm. “It’s easier to deny danger than to accept it. But make no mistake, if you don’t listen to me, you’re going to be dead.”

He shook his head as someone pulled Jyn back. Kay? She shoved them off, as Cassian kept talking. “I don’t know why they’d want me. I’ve got enemies, but demons? This is all too much.”

She pointed at the wreckage of the street. “This? This is what demons call  _ getting started _ .” Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she quickly scanned the message, before standing up and brushing herself off. 

“I need to go talk with someone. If there’s a war coming, I want to be out in front. Call me if you need anything at all,” she said, handing him a business card before she walked off into the darkening New York night, hands stuffed in her trench coat and the forces of Hell chasing after her. 


	2. Go Across The Tracks

Jyn walked through the weeds towards an old abandoned mill, groaning when she saw the guards posted everywhere around the premises.

Signs of Santeria dotted the fields around her, the gruesome sight of decapitated chickens and pigs’ blood painted all over the windows. 

_ Shit. _

These guys should not have been so on edge.

The last time she’d seen them, they’d been in the middle of one of their lighter and rum-fuelled rituals and it had only been a simple matter of threatening a single guard to get through to Papa Midnite. 

She palmed her lucky lighter in her coat, pulling it out and flicking it on in front of her face. Her other hand reached into another pocket, grabbing a small twist of paper, before holding it out and ready in front of her. 

Half a dozen guns were suddenly aimed in her direction.

_ “ _ Yo soy Eleggua,” she shouted. “El mensajero divino! Tengo mensajero para tu jefe!”

The men continued to point their guns at her. 

She passed her opposite hand over the lighter’s flame, before throwing the burning twist of paper to the ground.

The ground before her feet exploded in a quick flash and the men jumped back, lowering their guns as they did so. 

Jyn walked past them, their faces looking shaken and afraid as they fell to their knees in front of her. 

“Peasants,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. 

Inside, the mill was just as grim a sight as it was outside, blood all over the floor and a suspicious white powder everywhere. Judging by the other paraphernalia there, the razors, the scales, and the press there, it looked like there was a flourishing cocaine business here. 

_ What the hell was going on with Midnite right now? _

She wrapped her hand around her lighter and kept walking deeper into the building, the shadows gathering around her until she heard the sound of voices from around a corner. 

“Ready or not, here I come,” she shouted. 

Like it or not, she was going to get answers out of him.

Jyn burst around the corner, slamming the door back off its hinges to reveal Papa Midnite, but not as she’d seen him before. He looked far more dishevelled than she’d ever seen him, his normally perfectly pressed suit, rumpled and his eyes bloodshot. Her eyes flicked down to his hands where he was clutching an antique Winchester rifle close to his chest, his knuckles white with the grip.

“Lando? What the hell happened to you?”

His voice was creaky with disuse when he replied. “Who let you in here?”

Jyn shrugged. “Superstitious types, you hired. Maybe hire some better goons next time around.” She nodded towards his rifle. “What’s that?"

Lando smiled at her, a strained little thing. “Ace of Winchesters. Supposed to keep infernal types away. Cost me two hundred grand for this little thing.”

The darkness deepened around her, a tenebrous and almost living entity, the shadows only broken by the white of a skull and the cocaine all around the room. 

She licked her lips. “Couldn’t help but notice the sacrifices outside. What’s going on?”

Her eyes swept the room, noticing the guttering red candles on almost every surface and how Lando’s hands shook on the gun.

“Need to stay awake,” he muttered to himself as he tapped his head with the gun.

Jyn narrowed her eyes, noting the white powder under his nostrils. She took a tentative step closer, noticing the corpse in the corner of the room, its blood dark on the concrete floor. 

“What’s with the cocaine, Lando?”

“Can’t fall asleep,” he kept muttering to himself, almost like a mantra.

“Why? What’s going to happen if you fall asleep?” she said, taking another step closer. 

Lando burst forward, grabbing her by the lapels of her coat, bringing his face close to her own. She could almost taste the desperation on his breath, as she grabbed his hands, trying to push him away. 

“What’s happening, Lando?”

He laughed, his teeth bright in the darkness. “Did the wards dull your senses? You can’t feel it?”

Jyn untangled Lando’s fingers from her coat, pulling backwards and straightening her clothes to try and disguise her unease. 

“Look. I came here because you’re the best psychic that I know. I had a strange run in earlier. Like nothing I’ve heard before.”

His eyes were wild. “You need to go, Jyn. The less you know about this, the better.”

She shook her head. “I need answers first. Something bad’s happening, Lando, and I want to get out in front of it. What’s going on? I’ve never seen you like this before.”

He tapped his head with the gun again. “You need to get out of here.”

“Not until I’ve got answers. I need to know what you’ve been dreaming of.”

His face looked half crazed. “Not dreaming no more. Not closing my eyes. Hired me a doctor to keep me awake.”

Jyn nodded at the body in the corner. “That the doctor?”

“Cabron let me nod off.”

“What do you see when you sleep?”

Lando burst into action again, aiming and cocking the rifle directly at Jyn. She threw up her hands, forcing herself to stay calm on the outside.

_ No weakness. _

“What do you care? You don’t see what I can! You don’t have to live with it!” he roared. “It’s coming, Jyn! I see it every time I close my eyes!”

“What do you see?”

“Blackness! The darkness rising and the cage opening!” he shouted, the rifle still aimed at her head. “And I see you! No matter what, this is how it starts!”

He suddenly lowered the gun and slumped to the ground in anguish.

Jyn blinked, trying to process the information, before she started walking back out the door.

As she stepped back out across the threshold, Lando shouted at her, his voice echoing off the walls. “It’s pulling us all in! There’s no place to run! It’s coming for us all, Hellblazer!”

The darkness and cold winds outside almost felt oppressive when she walked out of the mill and finally took a deep breath, trying to work out what had just happened, her breaths fogging up in front of her. 

Her hand reached into an inner pocket, pulling out her phone and dialing a number from memory. “Bodhi?” she said, once the phone line picked up. “I need you to go to keep an eye on someone.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, before a voice crackled over the bad connection. “Who do you need me to keep an eye on?”

Jyn licked her lips. “He’s known as the Farseer.”

  
  
  
  


\---

  
  
  
  


The door to the office creaked open slowly to reveal a room in complete chaos, papers lying haphazardly everywhere and a jaundiced deadhead shovelling a stack of prescription bottles back into a desk drawer as Jyn burst in, in all her sodden glory. 

She hid her surprise at how dishevelled Hadder Ponta looked now, compared to the young man she’d once known in England before everything went up shit creek. 

“Hi Hadder. Long time no see,” she said, a brittle grin on her face.

His voice was curt. “Get out.”

Jyn sighed and pushed her way into the office. Sure, she wasn’t wanted by half the magical community in New York, but damn it, she was going to get answers.

“Is that a proper way to greet a mate, Hadder?” she said, cocking her head and trying to get a closer look at the notes on his desk. Metaphysics.

Interesting field he’d gone into.

“Either you get out or I get out. You can take whatever you want. I just don’t want you near me.”

She sighed. “Are you still trawling the internet for the things that go bump in the night? I just had a very interesting conversation with Papa Midnite about a rising darkness.”

His eyes narrowed. “If I tell you what you want to know, will you leave?”

A short and perfunctory nod. 

Hadder sat down at the desk, his fingers flying over the keys of his computer, starting to lose himself in the depths of his work. “I’ve been data-mining everything that I can find. News wires, police reports, all the message boards and social media sites that you could name. Things are crawling out of the woodwork on a scale I’ve never seen before,” he said, the words all coming out in a rush. 

She nodded to herself. That all made sense. “Look, I’ve got a demon terrorising a New York City detective and I need a hand with that. Can you hack a power grid by any chance?”

Hadder lifted his head, his eyes wild. “I’m not doing anything else for you, Jyn Erso.”

_ Her hands were covered in the chalk and pigs blood that she needed to draw the gate.  _

_ His voice was tight. “Jyn, this plan is stupid! It’s going to fail!” _

_ She could feel her trademark smirk settle on her face. “Relax, Hadder. It’ll work. Just another job, innit? Drinks at the pub on me after, yeah?” _

“Listen, I know that Newcastle was a bodge job -”

“It was a  _ nightmare,  _ Jyn!” he shouted. “Every night in my head, I see what happened to that little girl. What you did to that little girl! Can’t make it through the day without the pills to stop them. Diazepam to make me sleep. Oxy to dull the pain. And I’ll only get out of bed for the dextromethamphetamine.”

_ Jyn! Help me! It hurts! _

She shook her head. “We all learned our lessons from Newcastle, Hadder. Some more so than -”

“I learned to keep away from you,” he said, shoving his things into a bag and trying to leave, before she put a hand on his shoulder, holding him back. 

“You know, the police in Newcastle are still looking for the man that killed Astra Logue.”

His eyes were wild. “Jyn, it wasn’t a man that killed Astra.”

“The police don’t know that, do they,” she said, an edge in her voice. “It’d be a real shame if someone were to tip them off that you were there that night, wouldn’t it? And it’s not like you have an alibi or anything for that night. Not when the only other witness went off the grid years ago.”

“I wish that thing had taken you instead of Astra,” he spat.

She shrugged, a hand reaching into her pocket to clutch her lucky lighter. “Makes the two of us, Hadder. Don’t worry. After this, you’ll never need to see me again. I swear it.”

Hadder glared and her, and she raised her chin, looking him straight back in the eyes, daring him to make a move, the tension rising in the room and broken only when she shrugged and walked out the way that she’d come. 

  
  
  
  
  


\--

  
  
  
  
  


The brownstone was standing almost warm and inviting against the cold Manhattan skyline when Jyn got back into the city, ready for nothing more than a warm bath and a few bottles of whatever rotgut she still had inside. 

Her eyes narrowed when she saw a car parked directly in front of it, a dark haired man standing outside of it, looking straight at a building that should not have been visible to normal people. But then again, he wasn’t  _ normal  _ people, was he?

His head whipped around, almost as an instinctive thing, and he barreled straight towards her, holding out his phone as he did so. Jyn tried to shove down the feelings of fear and guilt that bubbled up and started to rise to the surface. 

He pointed a finger directly at the screen, jabbing at the occult symbol there. “What the hell was this on my door?”

She shrugged, forcing herself to stay calm. “Eye of Horus. Symbol of protection. Or so they say.”

The sound of a cab screeching to a halt echoed down the lonely street and a man walked out, light on his feet and holding a small knife in his hand, which he folded up and tucked into the pocket of his trousers. 

Jyn nodded towards the man, before fixing her gaze back on Cassian. “This is Bodhi. He’s my best friend -”

“Some would say her only friend,” Bodhi supplied, grinning the whole time and leaning on the roof of his cab, before pulling out a few bags of groceries and leaving them on the sidewalk in front of her when she didn’t move to take them. “To stop you starving to death.”

She rolled her eyes and elbowed him sharply in the ribs, ducking back when he tried to retaliate. “Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted. Cassian, Bodhi. Bodhi, Cassian. I sent him to protect you. He’s much better with a knife than I am. All my scratches just look like birds with broken wings.” 

Bodhi gave Cassian a sunny smile and extended a hand to him, which Cassian took, giving it a firm shake. 

Cassian looked confused, furrowing his brow. “Safe from what? You exorcised the demon, didn’t you?”

“Bodhi, I need you to talk to Hadder and make sure that he’s actually going to help me. He knows what I want him to do. Whatever it takes.” Bodhi nodded at her, before getting back into his cab and driving off into the distance.

Silence settled around them, broken only by the reedy whistle of the wind down the street, whipping up the leaves as it went. 

The image of the open demon gate flashed into her mind again. 

She shook her head and picked up the bags of groceries. “This isn’t something fit to be discussed on the street. You’d best come in, Cassian Andor.”

  
  
  
  


\--

  
  
  
  


Jyn could hear Cassian’s gasp of confusion and awe as he followed her into the basement after she opened the door, slowly descending the spiral staircase and watching the candles burst into brilliant life as he did so. 

“You could survive a nuclear winter down here,” he muttered, almost to himself, reaching a hand out to touch a helmet left on a side table, before Jyn batted it away. 

“Or you could start one here,” she said, glaring at him, from where he was picking up a leather bound grimoire and flipping through the pages. “Put that down, before it puts  _ you _ down.”

“What  _ is _ this place?” he murmured, his hand brushing against the spines of the books on the shelf. 

Jyn shrugged. “Used to belong to a mate of mine. She used to use this place for divination and scrying. Probably the most fortified place in New York.”

“Do you know why someone let a demon loose on New York?” he said, spitting out the word  _ demon _ as if it were bile. 

“Is there a difference between the average New Yorker and a demon? For all you know, they both look and smell the same. No doubt that’s what the tosspot I reckon did this thought, at any rate.”

Cassian’s head whipped around and he stared straight at her. “What the hell is going on? Who’s after me? Why is this all happening?” he yelled, jabbing his finger in her direction and stalking closer to her.

She pulled herself to her full height and glared back. “Look, mate. You want answers, you’ll get answers. But right now, I need a bit more time to  _ get _ those answers.”

“You said that you had an idea of  _ who _ was after me. Let’s start there.”

“You actually want to know the bugger who’s after you or do you want to know how to stop him. Which is more important to you?”

“I don’t know this world! It’s not  _ my world! _ I know the rules of my world inside and out, but this is your world. I don’t know anything about what’s going on right now! All I know is that there’s something trying to kill me and I’m having visions that won’t stop. Why don’t you start by explaining what the hell is going on here!”

She ignored him, turning her attention to her grimoire, before she felt the vice grip of a hand around her wrist. She tried to pull it back with all her strength. “Let go of me, Cassian!”

His eyes had glazed over, and he looked dazed. “Desperation. Pain. Loneliness.” He blinked and his eyes were full of compassion and pathos. “What sort of person is motivated by those things? And why does only one rise to the surface?”

His last statement was as final as a nail in a coffin. “Guilt. There’s so much guilt in you, Jyn Erso.”

She yanked herself back with all her strength, rubbing her wrist and avoiding his gaze, defensive. “Clairsentient. Or just a lucky guesser.” 

Jyn turned back to him. “You want answers?” Her hand pointed to the couch. “Park it.”

The leather creaked and echoed through the room as Cassian for once did as instructed and Jyn continued pawing through her grimoire. 

“I was right. The bastard after you is called Nergal. Has the power to control electricity and supposedly he’s second in command to Beezlebub himself. Bloody angel was right. The stakes are rising.”

_ Just stay calm, Astra! I’m going to save you, you have to hold on! _

_ It hurts so much, Jyn, please! _

Jyn shoved all her emotions down and pasted a brittle grin onto her face, bringing herself back to the present. 

“- I still don’t understand why it wants me.”

_ I’m going to hunt you down! I’m going to get you back, Astra! _

She shook herself, trying to bring herself back to the present. “It’s because of what you can see. Now that you can see those things, they can see  _ you _ . And some of them don’t like to be seen. Taking you out is just,” she felt around in her groggy mind for the right word. “Preemptive.”

The terrible reality of the situation sank down onto Cassian and he hunched over himself more. Jyn bit her tongue and tried to work out what to say. 

“Sorry. There wasn’t any point in trying to sugar coat it for you.”

Cassian rubbed a hand over his face. “Is there anything that I can do to help track this  _ demon _ down?”

She shrugged and pointed to a table. “Want to try a spot of scrying?”

“Scrying?” he said, confused, but he went over to the map table all the same, and peered at the surface, at the chimerical, hand-illustrated map, with its strange names and the  _ power _ evident in it. “The names are all wrong, but the names are right. What’s Seven Devils or Pandemonium?”

Jyn leaned against a nearby bookshelf, shoving her hands deep into her pockets. “Steela taught herself cartomancy. Drew her own maps, based on the things she saw. Named them all herself.”

She pointed at the place marked Pandemonium. “It’s a neighbourhood, with a bar of the same name in the middle. That sort of thing.”

Cassian looked skeptical. 

“She could find trouble like no one else.” She nodded at the map. “Touch the map. Tell me what you see.”

His hand touched the surface of the map a moment before he let out a sharp yelp and jumped back as if he’d been burned. 

A single drop of blood formed on the surface of the map, spreading wider over the middle before dripping down the map and settling over a single location, drying to a rusty stain. 

“What the hell is that?” he said, pointing at the table. 

Jyn shrugged. “What you asked for. Trouble. Where did it form?”

He peered closer at the map, before answering. “Corner of Quincey and Tompkins in Brooklyn. Does that mean something’s happening there now?”

A shake of her head. “Not yet. It’s daylight yet. Most of the beasties that your power’s connected to will only come out at night.”

“I should call it in.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How would you explain it? ‘Oh yeah, I met a washed up exorcist, who taught me how to scry using a map in a building that doesn’t technically exist?’” she snorted. “I can see that going down well with the other cops in your department.”

“We have to do something -”

“We are. We’re keeping you alive,” she said, her mouth working slower than her mind as it took a leap off a ramp and into clear air. “I think I know how to cut your attacker down to size, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have to use you as bait for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that the chapter count went up. We're getting somewhere, at least. I hope. 
> 
> Many thanks to allatariel, my long-suffering beta/alpha who has to deal with my stupidity and somehow make it readable.


	3. Where The Viaduct Looms Like A Bird Of Doom

Jyn rolled her eyes as she handed another hundred-dollar bill to a bored parking clerk while the shadows deepened around them, and Cassian stood next to her, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 

“Five hundred dollars just to have sex on a rooftop?” the clerk said, with a pointed look at the duffel bag in Jyn’s hand. 

She shrugged and pasted a lascivious smirk onto her face. “What can I say? It’s a fetish thing,” she said, craning her head back to see the top of the towering parking structure in front of her. She felt her smile grow wider as Cassian glared at her. 

The clerk waved his hand. “Save it. I don’t need to know.”

Another hundred appeared between her fingers as she raised an eyebrow. “One more thing, mate. There’s an extra hundred for you if you can keep this in your office with you,” she said, handing over a light bulb from her bag. “If it glows, you call me straight away.”

The clerk looked deeply confused. “It’s not screwed into anything.”

Another shrug. “Trust me on this, mate. Call me if you see anything.”

The lift was rickety and dirty when Jyn stepped into it, Cassian still by her side. His fingers twitched as the light above their heads flickered and Jyn fiddled with her lighter. 

“You smoke?” he said, breaking the silence.

A shake of the head. 

The light above their heads flickered again. 

“Why do you have that then? I saw a pack of cigarettes in the brownstone earlier.”

Her mouth formed a little moue of distaste. “Temptation. It tests my resolve.”

His brow furrowed and he looked at her, as though he were trying to pick her apart. “Where did you come from, Jyn Erso?”

“The sordid passions of my parents.”

“You do that a lot, you know.”

She turned her head to him, her expression quizzical. 

“Deflect emotions with humour.”

She barked a short laugh, bitter and empty. “Do I?”

“I’m trying to work out what’s driving you. You don’t seem to be fighting for any one cause or anything.”

The elevator doors creaked open and the flat expanse of the top floor of the parking structure spread out before them.

Jyn stepped out, her lighter in one hand and her bag of tricks in the other, before turning back to Cassian. “I don’t wallow in my feelings. That’s a luxury I don’t have. I’m quite happy to stay the way I am, not wallowing in the past.”

“And you’ve been risking your life to help protect mine. I don’t buy that at all.”

She yanked a can of white spray paint out of her bag. “We’re all fighting our own wars. How about you, Detective Cassian Andor? What makes  _ you _ tick? What gets you out of your bed in the morning?” she asked as she shook up the can and started painting the asphalt.

At their feet, the stark white lines of a demon trap started to form. 

Cassian stamped his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets as the wind picked up, cutting through his coat. The lights of New York City glittered around them, a thousand tiny jewels on a black velvet sky. 

“I’ve seen too much in my past,” Cassian said, so quietly that the wind almost hid the sound. “I fought someone else’s war and it brought me nothing. Now? Now I have a chance to make an impact in people’s lives on a small scale.” 

He gave Jyn a bitter smile. “Your turn now.”

She took a deep breath and licked her lips, tracing the last of the occult symbols on the ground with a paintbrush. “My mother died in front of me when I was a child.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

Jyn shrugged, looking up at him. “No point being sorry. I’m going to meet her again one day.”

Cassian looked at her, his eyebrows raised. 

She shook her head. “When I was a teenager, I started reading every book I could lay my hands on about the occult. Taught myself spells, rituals, curses. Turned out to be pretty good at it, too. Learned to conjure all sorts of dead things.”

“But not her.”

A sad smile formed on her face in response. “Yeah. Not her. Not yet.”

“Is that how you got into all of this?” he asked, gesturing at where she was putting some finishing touches on the occult symbols.

“I guess. Or maybe I just made all that up.”

He laughed, a bright sound while the lights of New York danced around him, a haze of light in the sky and Jyn stood up, brushing off her trousers. 

“All done.”

“What’s that?” he asked, his voice full of curiosity. 

“Demon Seal. Proprietary design of my own making,” she said, pride creeping into her voice. “Triangle of Solomon with a bunch of Elder Runes and Enochian. If Nergal wants you, he’ll have to get inside it and I can order his flaming arse back to Hell.”

Cassian’s eyes were fixed on the circle. “And this requires me to be  _ in _ the circle, doesn’t it.”

Jyn nodded. “I know you’re scared. But this is the only way. We won’t survive until sunrise otherwise.”

He licked his lips. “Are you afraid?”

“Every time,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’ll be there with you the whole time, Cassian.”

He took a deep breath, then her hand, and they stepped into the heart of the Demon Seal together. 

The wind gusted around them abruptly and the lights on the rooftop started to flicker, Jyn’s hand reaching into her pocket for her lighter. “Get ready, Cassian.”

Cassian’s fists clenched.

There were a handful of steps behind them and no one there but the parking clerk from earlier. Jyn rolled her eyes. 

Waste of time, that bugger. 

“What happened to calling me on my mobile phone?” she snapped, watching sweat bead on the guard’s forehead and his hand twitch. 

A hand touched her shoulder. “That’s not the guard, Jyn,” Cassian said, a note of panic in his voice.

Jyn narrowed her eyes and glared at him, holding Cassian’s hand by the wrist. “Stay calm, Cassian.”

“You want him, Nergal?” she shouted. “Come and get him, mate!”

“If you insist,” the guard said, his voice as deep and tormented as the abyss. 

The guard’s foot stepped over the edge of the seal, the lights on the rooftop flickering the whole time.

A horrible, guttural scream echoed out as the demon suddenly doubled over, white smoke rising from his body. 

Jyn shoved Cassian behind her, towards the other side of the seal, the words of an incantation on her lips. “Nergal de hoc mundo exisse... In nomine Dei iuberis... De hoc mundo exisse in nomine Dei iuberis!”

The smoke filled the entire seal as Jyn covered her mouth and nose, trying to peer through it before a single sound echoed out and the smoke dissipated. 

A laugh.

The demon was laughing.

“Your spells have always lacked  _ intention _ , Jyn Erso. How does it feel to lock eyes with your future?” its voice echoed, before a shape unfolded in the smoke and stood upright.

An exact copy of Jyn Erso, its eyes as black as sin and all the power of Hell pouring off it. 

She forced her fear down as Cassian stiffened behind her. “Not my best look,” she said, trying to maintain her nonchalant tone as her hands shook. “It’s a little unsettling, if we’re honest.”

It gave another dark laugh. “It’s only a matter of time before you join us. You ought to get used to this appearance.”

A lump rose in her throat. “Hell must be running short on souls if you’re bothering to deal with mine.”

“On the contrary,” the demon said, its eyes empty and fathomless and fixed on Cassian. “We’ve always counted on you to provide us with a fresh supply. Tonight, it’s his turn.”

An arc of electricity crackled across the rooftop. 

“Get out, Cassian!” she shouted, shoving him out of the demon seal as lighting cables snaked their way around her legs and anchored her to the ground, staring herself down. 

“Jyn!” she could dimly hear him shouting. 

“Your arrogance brought me to the heart of a city at night, Jyn Erso,” the demon shouted, raising a hand as an electrical storm burst to life on the city skyline. “In this place,  _ I _ am God.”

Her hand brushed against her coat pocket, before she cocked her head and pulled out a flare gun. “You forgot one thing about me, Nergal. I’m an atheist,” she said, firing a flare gun, its arc bright across the night sky.

_ Please let Hadder have actually listened to her this once.  _

The lightning storm suddenly failed, the lights of New York blinking out one by one, as entire blocks of the city went dark. 

“What is this?” the demon boomed.

“The power of Intention,” she said, striking a match and dropping it onto the surface of the seal, watching the winding symbols and white lines burst into brilliant flames.

The vice grip on her legs loosened and she stumbled out of the circle, watching the demon standing in the centre, a circle of flames imprisoning it. 

“Exorcisamus te, Nergal -”

“Let me out, Jyn! By my pledge to the First of the Fallen, I give you my word that I can do what you never could,” it said, its voice drowning out Jyn’s. Something flickered from behind the flames and a small body appeared there, half-hidden by the bulk of Nergal. “I will free Astra’s soul in exchange for my freedom.”

Jyn stepped closer to the flames, narrowing her eyes and feeling her hand shake as she saw the little girl the same way she had been on the last night of her life. A curly mass of hair and brand-new powder blue pyjamas and a trusting expression.

_ It hurts so much, Jyn! _

“Do your worst, demon,” she said, trying to maintain the conviction in her voice.

The spirit of Astra tried to run forward through the flames as the demon pulled her back by the shoulders. It held her, anchored her to it, while Jyn looked on. 

“Is that you, Jyn?” Astra said, her little girl’s voice unchanged across the years. 

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and Jyn roughly scrubbed them away with her sleeve. “Astra -”

“Jyn!” Astra cried out, before the demon yanked her back again. “Help me, please, Jyn! Please!”

The demon Jyn grinned, its teeth sharp in its mouth. “Do you know what it’s like to die? Ten times a day? A hundred times a day? Astra does. All because of you, Jyn Erso.”

Astra started sobbing, as the demon wrapped an arm around her in a parody of an embrace. “Did you hear that? She’s in so much pain, Jyn. You’re going to fail her, again. And all for what? The life of another sinner?”

Jyn swallowed down the lump in her throat, her hands shaking. “Please - no - is there anything I can do?”

_ Help me, please, Jyn! _

_ Just hold on, Astra! I’m going to find you! _

“Release me from this,” the demon said, still holding Astra close. 

The tears threatened to spill over again, and Jyn felt time come to a crawl around her.

A demon or a child?

Astra or Nergal?

_ It hurts so much, Jyn! _

She swallowed again, before nodding and raising her hand. “Audite me, libera daemonium -”

There was a sharp tap on her shoulder, and she shoved it off. 

It happened again, sharper this time. “Jyn!” Cassian’s voice shouted, sounding as if he were miles away. “Jyn! Listen to me! That thing he’s holding - that’s not Astra.”

He grabbed her wrist, his hand wrapping around hers and she could feel a veil lift from the world and something like ice start to rush through her body, seeing the world as a mass of white, spectral figures.

And Astra. 

But it wasn’t a crying little girl, it was an imp, its face mischievous and cunning. 

“I’m scared,” it said again, its voice still that of a scared little girl. 

She shoved Cassian back, her vision darkening at the edges again, her gaze fixed solely on Nergal. “You think you can toy with  _ my _ life?” she demanded. “I’ve got news for you, mate! I’m coming back for Astra. And then I’m coming back for every last one of you! You can pass that along to your boss in Hell!”

A breeze started to whip around her feet and she could feel the rage starting to boil over, power flowing through her veins. 

“Per júdicem vivórum et mortuórum! Sed enim mundi Creator! Qui habet potestatem mittere in infernum! Ut abire ex regno protinus!” 

The flames suddenly grew into a huge inferno in front of her as the winds raged around her, the smoke spiralling into the night sky until the fire collapsed, the screams of Nergal echoing in the distance. 

Jyn sagged, her strength ebbing. 

_ It hurts so much, Jyn! _

She’d been so close to Astra. She’d been so close to letting her soul be free again.

Cassian’s arm wrapped around, pulling her close to him as she stared numbly at the blackened circle. “Hey, leave it. Leave it. That’s it.That’s it. Let’s go.” 

She let him walk her towards the lift and out towards his car, holding her close the whole time as the lights of New York came back to life around them. 

“Who’s Astra?” Cassian asked, knocking her out of her reverie as he drove, the streets outside blurring into one. 

Jyn shook her head, trying to clear her mind. 

She took in a deep breath. “Daughter of a friend of mine. Someone I knew back in Newcastle,” she murmured, feeling Cassian’s eyes flicker over to her. “Demon possessed her.”

Cassian said nothing, just drove on. 

“There wasn’t a good way to exorcise her, so -” she licked her lips. “I thought that I could conjure a more powerful demon.”

“Nergal.”

She nodded. “I thought that I could control Nergal, force him to order the lesser demon away.”

“But it took Astra instead.” His voice was soft and introspective. 

“After tearing her apart in front of me.”

She stared back out the window again, resting her head against the cool, still glass, a counterpoint to the feverish, roiling mess in her mind. 

“You know, Jyn, you’re not the only one with ghosts in your past,” Cassian said. 

She looked over to where he sat, his eyes fixed on the road and her mind in a complete daze. 

“I was in Afghanistan, you know this. But - I wasn’t there because of anything to do with  _ me _ , I was there because a bunch of politicians pointed the finger and told me to go kill people there and -”

“You saw something?”

His breath was jagged. “It was in Kabul. We were clearing the city and there was a child -” his voice broke off, before he took in another breath and forged on. “Standard procedure with a suicide bomber is to signal jam all frequencies and send in the bomb squad. But...the jammers failed that time and - I watched him die in front of me.”

Jyn reached a hand over to the console between them, resting hers over his. 

“What I’m trying to say, Jyn, is that it isn’t your fault.”

She leaned her head back. “You can’t know that.”

He shrugged, the muscles and tendons of his hand moving under hers. “I can.”

“You should leave now. Nergal’s gone, Cassian.”

He shook his head. “I’m still having visions of you, Jyn. Whatever happens, it’s going to involve you. You’ll need someone there to watch your back.”

“I work better alone.”

“I’m sure a lot of people would agree.”

“I always put myself first.”

“Matter for debate, but it’s a good survival technique.”

“Anyone who puts their trust in me dies.”

There was a pause, before Cassian spoke again. “Ok, Jyn, you’ve got me there. But this is what I know, right now. I was waiting for something, and I didn’t know what I was waiting for. You don’t know what you found. The question is -- can we help each other or not?”

She grinned to herself, just a little one, but a real smile, and her hand tightened on Cassian’s. 

The car started approaching a series of flashing emergency lights, as Cassian furrowed his brow. “Hey, Jyn, this is Quincy and Tompkins. The streets from the map.”

She jerked upright. “Stop the car.”

Jyn rushed out, her breath fogging up in front of them, as Cassian’s voice cut through the crowd. “NYPD. Coming through!”

There was police tape all around the sidewalk and the burnt out shell of a bodega where a tall, all-American teenage boy lay on the ground, his throat torn out.

_ The darkness is rising, Jyn _ .

She could feel Cassian’s eyes on her before she turned back. “You up for a spot more demon hunting?”

He grinned at her and held up his badge. “NYPD, clear the area!”

The metallic taste in her mouth was back and her foot crunched on the ashes of the bodega as she felt the power from the rooftop start to rush through her again. 

Something skittered away in the back of the store. 

The light of a torch pierced the darkness.

She turned to grin at Cassian, before walking deeper into the burned out shell of the store, all trench coat and arrogance, snapping her fingers as a flame appeared in the palm of her hand, ready to kick any demon in the bollocks back to where they came from and spit on them when they were down.

The Hellblazer was on the warpath. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's halloweiner done!
> 
> I'll be coming back to this fandom for sure, but I'll be taking November off for nano, then there's going to be the small matters of final exams and travelling, so consider this a pre-sabbatical notice. 
> 
> As always, many thanks for allatariel for being such a good beta!

**Author's Note:**

> Day Two of Halloweiner!
> 
> Christmas but for goths progresses apace. 
> 
> Many thanks for allatariel and FiKate for helping beta this work. 
> 
> Title from the PJ Harvey cover of Red Right Hand.


End file.
